Stacy Warner

Hist 743.2

Professor Johnson

Study Questions for To End All Wars:  Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order by Thomas Knock

1)      What emphasis does Knock give to the role of divinity in Wilson political career and to what extent did socialist theory play in his political approach?

2)      According to Knock Wilson saw himself as a strong leader who could perfect democratic constitutional order by striking a supreme covenant between God and the United States.  What emphasis does he place on the role of Christianity in international law to accomplish this?

3)      How does Wilson view of Roosevelt’s New Nationalism result in governmental paternalism and in what ways does he eventually merge it with his own policies of New Freedom?

4)      What does Knock suggest was the long-term impact of “cooling off” treaties implemented by William Jennings Bryan?

5)      What were the “special interests” that Wilson saw as dangers of the Mexican Revolution that could curtail future international progress?

6)      What were the correlations that Wilson drew between the French and Mexican Revolutions in terms of the role he did not want the U.S. to represent?

7)      Knock suggests that the Republicans saw themselves as the party of “patriots” and the Democrats as the party of “submission”.  How does this relate to Wilson’s “to Proud to Fight” policy/stance?

8)      Does Knock place emphasis on the aggression of Pancho Villa as the event that killed the Pan-American Pact or where the underlining disputes that remained unresolved with the Southern region the eventual demise?

9)      What was essential for the gamble within the House-Grey Memorandum to be successful?

10)  Knock disagrees with past scholarship that points to the Congressional elections of 1918 as “the point of no return in fusing an intense degree of partisanship into the debate over American membership into the League of Nations.”  Instead, he suggests it began with the Presidential election of 1916.  What does he point to that would support this claim?

11)  How does the creation of the Adamson Act play into the election of 1916?  Is it instrumental in gaining votes for Wilson that he may not otherwise have had?

12)  Knock suggests that the Socialist vote played a large part in tipping the electoral scales in Wilson’s favor.  What campaign strategies led to this outcome?

13)  According to Knock who had a greater impact on Wilson – the British radicals or the American progressive internationalists?  Why?

14)  Knock seems to suggest that Wilson had exhausted every alternative measure before finally entering the war resolving that it would be the only means to establish peace and create a League of Nations.  What does Knock claim to have had greater impact on this decision, the resumption of German submarine warfare or the attempt of alliance between Germany and Mexico?

15)  In what was did the creation of the Committee on Public Information and legislature like the Espionage Act strain Wilson’s alliance with the progressive internationalists?  What evidence does Knock give of the President’s ignorance toward their pleas?